Stop by my parent’s house in September or October and likely you will not leave without a bag filled with granny smith apples from their tree. My father grafts several varieties of apples on to his trees, but the granny smiths are the ones that are the most prolific, and they’re also great for pies, applesauce, apple butter, and cobbler.
Continue reading "Apple Cobbler" »
My sweetheart came over to my parents the other day for dinner. He wasn’t exactly thrilled when he heard we were having meatloaf, and insisted on taking only a very small piece. All that changed the minute he took his first bite. (You should have seen the expression on his face—that look of amazement? priceless.)
Continue reading "Classic Meatloaf" »
If there is one recipe that every home cook should know, it’s this baked chicken recipe. All you need is chicken, olive oil, salt, and pepper (and maybe some stock or white wine for gravy).
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When the nights start getting cooler after a long hot summer, and the leaves show glimpses of turning color, that’s when apple season starts around here. We grow Granny Smith, Gravenstein, Pink Lady, and Fuji apples, all great for making apple pie!
Continue reading "Old Fashioned Apple Pie" »
September is a great time of year for fresh green beans here in Sacramento. I was too busy to plant them this year, but have been finding beauties at our local market. Usually we just boil them until tender, place a dab of butter on them, sprinkle with salt and pepper and call it a day.
Here’s a quick and easy way to take them up a notch,
Continue reading "Sriracha Orange Glazed Green Beans" »
Here is a family favorite for a weeknight dinner—chicken thighs, floured and browned and then baked, served with a creamy mushroom sauce. You can serve it with rice, or if you put it over egg noodles, you have something resembling a chicken stroganoff.
Continue reading "Chicken with Creamy Mushroom Sauce" »
Who says strawberries have a monopoly on shortcake desserts? In serious denial regarding the end of August and the daylight hours that get shorter and shorter, I bought a huge basket of blackberries at the market today. I tossed them with a little lemon juice and sugar and let them macerate while I made a batch of butter and cream biscuits.
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It’s Labor Day weekend and the unofficial end of the summer holidays (though for some kids, school started a couple weeks ago!) We’ve been experimenting with grilled shrimp lately and I thought I’d share this festive shrimp taco for those of you still looking for ideas of what to grill this weekend.
Continue reading "Grilled Shrimp Tacos with Mango Avocado Salsa" »
Here’s one of the best loved recipes on the site—tomato pie! Perfect at the peak of summer tomato season. First posted Aug 2009. ~Elise
One of the great things about going on vacation is I get to hang out with my friends, and sometimes meet their friends, who sometimes have OMG-this-is-so-GOOD dishes that they bring over. This tomato pie recipe is a result of one of these encounters.
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Did you know that blueberries are good for you? They’re considered a “superfood“. Good for the brain. At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m on my third (fourth, fifth) one of these blueberry muffins.
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Eggplant parmesan is one of those great Italian comfort foods—a layered casserole much like lasagna but with slices of globe eggplant taking the place of pasta.
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Hi everyone!
For the last several months (seems like years) we’ve been quietly working behind the scenes to update the design of Simply Recipes to make it easier to use on different screen sizes and tablets. We are delighted to present our new “semi” responsive design that changes shape depending on whether you are viewing the site on a desktop computer or on a tablet. (You can see this in action if you are on a computer; just resize your browser window and watch how various elements rearrange on the page.)
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Usually if an eggplant and pasta are in the same room together, there’s tomato sauce involved. Here’s a recipe that bucks this convention and features eggplant without the sauce, but with red onions, garlic, baby spinach, and mint, all sautéed in olive oil and tossed with spaghetti pasta and crumbled feta cheese.
Continue reading "Pasta with Eggplant, Feta, and Mint" »
Sometimes I want to bake something sweet, but I just don’t want a big fuss with a mixer or running the oven for an hour. These chewy almond squares fit the bill. They’re basically blondies, but made with almond extract instead of vanilla, and with chopped toasted almonds mixed in instead of butterscotch. A big thank you to commenter Chris who made these substitutions on our blondie recipe and shared how well they turned out!
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I love growing cucumbers, truly I do! But boy are they prolific. With just one Persian cucumber plant I have enough cucumbers for the neighborhood. If you too are a summer gardener faced with the same dilemma of too many cucumbers, or if you just love the taste of cool and crunchy cucumbers, here’s an easy and fun way to use them, in a colorful salsa!
Continue reading "Confetti Cucumber Salsa" »
Fellow gardeners, do you ever plant something because you like the look of it, but grow more than you know what to do with? That’s been my relationship to the Japanese eggplants in my garden. I love to grow them. They hide out trellised against a fence behind my garden bed. They’re a beautiful deep shade of purple, long and elegant.
Continue reading "Grilled Japanese Eggplant with Tahini Sauce" »
Usually I think to use my slow cooker in the winter, for a braise or stew or maybe some pulled pork. But I’m also finding it rather convenient in the summer too, as a way to avoid using the oven and heating up the kitchen. This chicken rice casserole recipe is designed for a slow cooker. You brown onions and chicken thighs, place in a slow cooker with basmati rice, tomatoes and stock. 2 hours later it’s done!
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Who doesn’t love cornbread? Wait, don’t answer that. If you are one of those rare folks who looks the other way when presented with just baked cornbread out of a hot skillet, I feel for you, really I do. For the rest of us, cornbread is the ultimate comfort food. For you I present a spicy, cheesy jalapeño cornbread, made in a cast iron skillet, with fresh or pickled jalapeños, corn, and jack or cheddar cheese. Perfect to go with chili beans.
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What’s a burrito bowl? A burrito without the tortilla wrapping. A bowl of steaming hot rice, topped with savory beans, and each and every taco topping you want—salsa, avocados, cilantro, guacamole, jicama, lettuce or cabbage. Here’s the thing with a burrito bowl, it can be made in 15 minutes with pantry items and toppings from the fridge. Canned beans, reheated frozen cooked rice, prepared salsa. It’s fast, it’s easy, it works.
Or you can take your burrito bowl to another level and cook your beans from scratch, or even make Spanish rice or cilantro rice. For this burrito bowl pictured here I cooked up a bag of beautiful Rancho Gordo black beans from scratch, in a cumin, garlic, and bay leaf infused broth. We also experimented with canned beans, which if you use, you will want to reheat with a few extras.
Continue reading "Black Bean Burrito Bowl" »
My mother and father live down the street from me, just a few houses away. This is wonderfully convenient for yours truly, who often finds herself heading over to their house to raid their fridge. No, I’m not a teenager, but yes, I still do raid their fridge. (You would too, my parents have great leftovers!)
Thankfully for mom and dad, the arrangement goes both ways. They stopped by the other day when we had just finished up cooking this salmon chowder, and happily packed half of it to take home with them. The verdict the next day? Raves.
Continue reading "Salmon Chowder" »
